Miata Mailing List: December 1993, Message #8
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   From: Andy Poling 
Subject: CompuServe, Miataville, and the List (fwd)
   Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 13:14:25 -0500

Shel Hall sent me this message about the whole "list vs. Compu$erve" debate
and I thought it would be best to post it to the entire list.  If you have
comments, make sure you CC Shel because he only gets the monthly digest.

-Andy (C/S Miata - Team Wannabee)

Andy Poling                              Internet: andy@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
UNIX Systems Programmer                  Bitnet: ANDY@JHUNIX
Homewood Academic Computing              Voice: (410)516-8096    
Johns Hopkins University                 UUCP: uunet!mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!andy

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 12:09:51 -0500
From: Shel Hall <76701.103@CompuServe.COM>
To: andy@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
Subject: CompuServe, Miataville, and the List

Andy-

Since I get only the monthly digest, I was unaware of the "CompuServe"
discussion until now ... you may want to forward this to the list, or to
those particularly interested in this topic, and ask that anyone with
comments CC me on their responses, unless they want a reply a month from
now ...

I could have sworn that when I first subscribed I mentioned that my
intention was to post the digest on CompuServe; the Miataville section
of the CARS forum is a very popular place, and I put a _hand_edited_
version of the Digest up there each month because most CompuServe
members find it a real pain to deal with large volumes of mail.

Part of the "mail pain" is that CompuServe limits your mailbox to N pieces
of mail, i.e., after you have N pieces of mail in your mailbox, all further
incoming mail is immediately bounced.  I believe N = 50 for most CompuServe
users.  With the volume of mail the Miata list generates, any CompuServe-
based Miata List subscriber who doesn't log on for a few days runs the risk
of clogging the List (and CompuServe's rather limited Internet gateway) with
bounced mail.

In addition, most CompuServe members pay a charge per piece of mail over
some minimum number (if they are on the "basic" payment plan) or by the
minute (if they are on the regular plan).  In either case, reading Internet
mail piece-by-piece can be expensive, not least because in many cases the
Internet header is longer than the message it heads!

Each month, when the Digest arrives, I ...

        Download the files from my CompuServe mailbox.  This month is
        was 6 separate files.  Naturally, they don't arrive in order.

        Combine the files in proper order, making the multi-volume
        digest into a single file.

        Run it through a mail processing program that strips out
        unneccessary Internet header information.

Then I hand-edit the Digest, ...

        I scan the whole Digest, and read most of it.

        Reformat those messages that are more than 80 columns wide, or
        have other formatting problems.

        Remove various test messages, bounced mail notices,
        subscription requests, List-oriented administrivia,
        surplus headers, and other stuff that doesn't affect
        CompuServe users.

        ZIP it.

        And upload it to the Miataville section of the CARS forum
        in both plain-text and ZIP forms.

It takes a couple of hours.

I don't delete or change any of the real content of the List, but I
suppose that if a real flame war errupted, or if someone was really
making a fool of himself, I'd delete some or all of those messages.
No sense in archiving stuff like that.

My intention is to support and publicise the List and the Miata, and to
do so in a way that is both easy for CompuServe members to use and easy
on the rest of the List members. CompuServe doesn't do FTP and, in
fact, doing anything on the Internet besides Mail is pretty tough from
CompuServe.  The Miata List Digests in the Miataville file libraries are
information archives that are easily available to CompuServe users.

I'd like everyone's permission to continue to do so.

-Shel